Candy madness

[gfish]

During my fudge-making marathon recently, I decided to go out with a bang.



It started fairly normal. I wanted a maple base, so I skipped the chocolate, substituted brown sugar for white, and added maple syrup. The real stuff, since the grocery store was out of maple flavoring.



But then it took a hard left turn when I fried up a rasher of bacon nicely crispy and chopped it up.



Maple-bacon fudge! Except more like maple-bacon praline or maple-bacon brittle, because the thermometer went crazy. I had to turn off my targeting computer and, uh, the candy Force is not strong in me. I obviously need more practice with the cold water test. Or just a less sucky thermometer.



Tada! It was actually pretty tasty. Had I known it was going to be so hard, I would have poured it out much, much thinner. The bacon wasn't very noticeable, sadly. Maybe what I should have done was use the bacon grease instead of butter. Since I was leaving town the next day (and didn't want to have to declare it as a meat product to the border guards), I left it with hsifyppah who has been inflicting it on various people.

Comments

[najalaise.livejournal.com]

Bacon-pecan-chipotle brittle with a panela base is So Good... but yes, you don't really notice the bacon too terribly much.

[corivax.livejournal.com]

Can you tell, looking at the fudge, that it's bacony? Are there visible red and white stripey bits?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Not really. The bacon bits aren't very obvious. It's not something I would leave around vegetarians without warning.

[triskadekaphile.livejournal.com]

STEALTH BACON

[triskadekaphile.livejournal.com]

And may I add that 'Stealth Bacon' would make an excellent band name.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

And also an excellent product line. Stealth Bacon ice cream! Stealth Bacon sushi! Stealth Bacon rice-krispie treats! I'd buy 'em.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You know you *have* to tell Scalzi what you've committed. The Baconator would be.... amused. :)

[dianthus.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you should substitute white chocolate for the chocolate?

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

Dave Tinney (he of the Notorious! Salad! of DOOM!) made bacon chocolate by melting some Scharfenberger (spelling fail) and mixing in chopped cooked bacon. It was very tasty.

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

Also, I don't know if there's any left, but at one point I brought maple fudge over to the Brainpan. The Joy of Cooking has a really reliable recipe. It involves three dairy products and three types of sugar; how can you go wrong?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I did get some! It was much better than any of the batches I made. I'll just need to practice some more, I guess. :)

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you! The recipe is in the 1997 Joy edition.
I've discovered that experimental cookies and candies disappear pretty darn fast.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, white chocolate doesn't taste of anything much, so maybe the bacon flavor would be more noticeable :-P

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

You're going straight to gastronome hell. May you be crushed by a stampede of bacon- and substance-crazed Burners.

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

What is it with burners and bacon? We do love us some bacon though.

-B.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

It's very nice with a dry apple cider, especially as this latter acts as a solvent to free your glued-together teeth.

It's aging interestingly. The bacon grease is dissolving the candy around it, so you bite in to juicy bacon pockets of goo. So I'm not sure how stable the candy would be if you substituted bacon grease for butter. But as always I submit myself as a bacony guinea pig for experiments in bacon science.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

Maybe you already have! You just never know with stealth bacon.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I don't know, man. My favorite kind of bacon by far is the fake kind.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

I regretfully threw out the last of it today. The bacon was a new colour and suddenly the brittle was soft all through, which seemed... bad. It still smelled so good, though, damnit. Curse my slow, feeble teeth.